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5/23/79 Meeting • is no politics in the Water Department and because of its semiautonomy,. is there no politics or never"was or does not exist now? TENGAN: , Mr.- Chairman, I wrote that, what you're reading now. TANAKA: Okay. TENGAN: I wouldn't say that today there's no politics that goes on in the Department; however, under the semiautonomous body having representatives from the • community, nonelected representatives from the community,. serving on the • Water Commission to ru.n .the Water Department can and probably, well in my opinion is, that's subject to local politics then if you're directly • under the mayor type or even directly under the council who are' politicians,. That was kind of the basis of my writing. MANAGER: Another thing, maybe through my experience being a Department head, one of the department heads in public works and as "the .Manager of the Department • of Water Supply, you know, you play politics. When I was in Public Works because 'I 'm an: appointee, I 'm forced you know. to take an active role in politics; intact,' at one time, under one administration, I even gave campaign speeches but even in the Department .of Water Supply, the only type of politics I would play is to support the administration because we are part of it; but not go actively be a leader of that because the philosophy • back of this semiautonomy was that to keep it out of politics. And, of course, we support' the legislators who help us; but not actively; and really, it's not for .personal thing, but for the good of the department in getting . funding like that, appropriations like that, so it's always a matter of voluntary kind of stuff; even our personnel in the department they are not asked. to support 'certain,' certain people like that, but if they want to help because of or for the department's purpose, they would. • TANAKA: Again, too, you know in the second paragraph where you're talking about; • here in the memo, that bad politics arise when individuals,' too, look at .their financial gains and bad politics arise when are. paid .off or special • interest groups are mentioned along with bad politics as a definition of bad politics. George, correct?' -15-